Sometimes I worry that I’m too negative about the difficulties of running great cafés and coffee shops but our recent research, in conjunction with Caffé Culture, as well as a meeting last week made me realise just how important this message continues to be. At this meeting a client of mine described how… Read More »
I was working in a small provincial town recently and spoke to the owners of two coffee shops approximately thirty yards apart. They were on the usual, slightly decimated, High Street that can be found in almost any town in the UK. Lots of “To Let” signs and empty stores. In between them was a… Read More »
Recently I’ve been working with a lot of very successful operators… Recently I’ve been talking to a lot of operators who are really struggling… Today I realised that, WITHOUT EXCEPTION, these two groups thought entirely differently about one key factor… They way they think about the customers in relation to the success or failure of… Read More »
At Caffe Culture this year much of what Hugh and I will be doing is talking about marketing. In our coffeeshopquestion survey (which if you haven’t filled it out yet – please DO!) the biggest issue so far is an inability to attract new customers. Therefore this will be a major part of our talk.… Read More »
Hugh and I were kindly invited by Jeffery Young of Allegra Strategies to attend the UK Coffee Leader Summit on the day previous to Caffe Culture. These events are always useful from a networking perspective (even though that’s generally an expression that puts the fear of god into me) but there was some great content… Read More »
Today The Coffee Boys move into the funky new Web 2.0 world – we’re getting down there with the hip media kids and at the moment they’re staring at us in a “freak” fashion but we’re here to stay. Hugh and I will be producing a lot more of these in the future but hopefully… Read More »
When we first set up our businesses we are 100% convinced that we can and will do a better job than the competition. We list out the factors that we will do better, that we’ll relentlessly focus on until we have this wonderful business that clearly offers a “superior experience”. We smirk, snigger and discuss… Read More »
I’m just back from nearly three weeks in the US and spent considerable time in New York – it is, as ever, just about the most stimulating city on the planet. I saw some amazing retailing and some inspirational restaurants but I have to say the quality of the coffee bars (that I saw anyway)… Read More »
Why are you doing what you do? What is the outcome? What are you slogging away day to day for? Most people simply can’t answer these questions within their business. You must be able to clearly state what it is that you want out of the business in an effort to properly move towards that.… Read More »
I’m increasingly obsessed with this concept since it applies to such a large extent in so much of our lives. Why does Tiger Woods want to keep getting better at golf for example? What drove Michael Schumacher, despite so many years at the top of Formula One, to still work harder than anyone else and… Read More »